HN user
What is this 'energy' is that people are extracting from their social environment? And why are we holding off judging extroversion against introversion?
I'm going to state for the record that introversion is best. Anybody who isn't introverted has no kind of mental life.
He thinks that throwing the towels on the floor is OK and that better still would be to install a new waste bin by the door. I agree with him. But he wants to reject moral language and label his approach 'pragmatic'.
In reality he merely has a different opinion as to what is right in the first place.
My concern is that if people do what they judge to be right but call it 'wrong' or 'pragmatic' or whatever then this can cause harmful confusion and guilt. And I think that the idea that 'Selfish == wrong; selfless == right' is the hangover of a puritanical strain of Christian thinking.
The article assumes it is wrong for the restroom user to discard his paper towel onto the floor. But why? A complete moral analysis would take into account the fact that he is a valuable employee and he doesn't want to pick up germs and thereby risk becoming ill.
Just because his action imposes a small cost on somebody else _who is payed to tidy up_ that doesn't necessarily make it wrong.
(Besides, picking up the towels takes a few seconds. Not much more time than picking up one towel, and far less time than cleaning the rest of the restroom.)
It's a false christian morality which says that actions taken on behalf of oneself are always wrong and that actions taken on behalf of others are always right. There's a right use for a paper towel and there are right uses for various people's time. Morality is practical.